After a difficult year dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, we usher in 2022, the year of transition, hope, drama and anxiety, both locally and globally.

Sunday marked the end of an era for a remarkable citizen, Charles Njonjo, a man who encapsulated the incredible diversity, peculiarity and resilience that epitomises the Kenyan nation.

Njonjo will forever remain in Kenya’s history as an astute legal mind, a proud, truly loyal, assertive patriot, a distinguished aristocrat who unabashedly excelled in British tradition as a successful civil servant, politician and capitalist.  

The long-serving Attorney-General vividly embraced the deep bond and inextricable links, between independent Kenya and its former colonial master Britain, ties entrenched to this day politically, economically and militarily.

In a twist of mortal fate, paleontologist and world renowned wildlife conservationist Dr Richard Leakey, a close Njonjo associate whose family roots in the United Kingdom are firmly entrenched in Kenya, died hours after Njonjo’s demise.

Their departure at the dawn of 2022 followed that in the twilight of 2021 of the iconic spiritual moral compass, anti-apartheid and social justice crusader Archbishop Desmond Tutu. 

Nobel Peace Laureate Tutu was credited with coining the term Rainbow Nation in post-apartheid South Africa.

However, Tutu regretfully leaves revered Nelson Mandela’s country, reeling from graft and unfulfilled expectations the clergyman prayed for fervently in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission he chaired.

Our own Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission recommendations remain unfulfilled, nearly a decade after it presented its report, Kenya is still deeply politically fractured. 

Njonjo and Leakey’s transition mirrors Kenya’s experience with colonialism and post-colonial shenanigans akin to South Africa.

While colonialism was oppressive and exploitative, it had some positives that endure today.

Our legal system and our constitutional foundations bred at the Lancaster House conferences that Njonjo so passionately championed with meticulous dictum and ruthless finality is anchored on English Common Law. 

Kenya’s High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court were built by the British. So proud was Njonjo of this tradition and English mannerisms, that Kenyans appropriately knighted him ‘Sir Charles’.

His pin-striped three-piece suits, complete with a watch-chain and a rose flower on his lapel, is the stuff of legends.

Leakey, who once served as the Head of the Civil Service alongside a ‘Dream Team’ of technocrats, was an extraordinary individual whose parents and siblings perfectly blended into Kenyan society and politics, vernacular language to boot.

Facing political criticism as the director of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), Leakey invited me and colleague Deo Omondi to his house (the first African journalists, he said) on a cliff in Kiserian overlooking Magadi plains to tell us the “real story.”

He then chartered a plane to take us on a 5,000km fact-finding visit to national parks across Kenya. That was quite an eye-opener and Leakey was vindicated.

Njonjo and Leakey may have been brash and overzealous in their duties and demeanour, but had outstanding attributes our current leaders could learn from. 

Goodbye to an unusual and difficult year upended by Covid-19. We now enter a season of political succession drama amid a ravaged economy, climate change and a fragile health system. 

In the transitioning era of the “new normal”, let us remember we are not the only country holding elections – Australia, Brazil, Colombia, France, India, Philippines, South Korea and US Congress and Senate midterm polls too take place in 2022.

Let us present our best show of electoral justice, nationalism and democracy. —[email protected]